The Horrors of Bull Island, “the Worst Music Festival of All Time” (1972)

in Music | June 18th, 2021

It’s maybe a lit­tle unfair to com­pare 1972’s “Bull Island” Fes­ti­val to Fyre Fest, the music fes­ti­val scam so egre­gious it war­rant­ed duel­ing doc­u­men­taries on Hulu and Net­flix. But “Bull Island” — or what was orig­i­nal­ly called the Erie Canal Soda Pop Fes­ti­val — was an epic cat­a­stro­phe, maybe the worst in music fes­ti­val his­to­ry, and well deserv­ing of its own media fran­chise. Still, its orga­niz­ers had every inten­tion of fol­low­ing through on the event. What hap­pened wasn’t entire­ly their fault, but part­ly the result of a cam­paign to route thou­sands of hip­pies out of the state of Indi­ana.

Pro­mot­ers Tom Dun­can and Bob Alexan­der had pre­vi­ous­ly staged a suc­cess­ful fes­ti­val, the Bosse Field Free­dom Fest, in Evans­ville, an event fea­tur­ing Tina Turn­er, Edgar Win­ter, Dr. John, Howl­in’ Wolf, and John Lee Hook­er. Eager to top them­selves and bring a “bigger-than-Woodstock”-sized hap­pen­ing to the Mid­west, they booked “a block­buster col­lec­tion of artists” for their next event, writes Patrick Cham­ber­lain at Ever­fest, “includ­ing Black Sab­bath, The All­man Broth­ers, Fleet­wood Mac, Ravi Shankar, The Eagles, and even Cheech and Chong.”

Before secur­ing all the per­mits, they placed ads and start­ed sell­ing tick­ets. The two eager 20-some­thing orga­niz­ers both suf­fered from the trag­ic flaw of youth­ful over­con­fi­dence, which blind­ed them to the fact that there was no way their next fes­ti­val was going to hap­pen in Evans­ville, or any­where in Indi­ana, for that mat­ter. The error led to what may be, as Band­splain­ing explains above, the worst music fes­ti­val of all time. “The lack of pre­pared­ness, the law­less­ness, the des­per­a­tion of the crowd; it’s like the bad-acid trip ver­sion of Wood­stock where [spoil­er] every­thing burns down. [/spoiler].”

Although reports from locals most­ly char­ac­ter­ized the duo’s pre­vi­ous out­door fes­ti­val at Bosse Field as peace­ful, Evans­ville May­or Rus­sell Lloyd vowed it would nev­er hap­pen again. Yet Dun­can and Alexan­der plowed ahead with plan­ning the Eerie Canal Soda Pop Fes­ti­val, as Sean Mcde­vitt writes at the Couri­er & Press:

Con­tracts were signed, heli­copters were rent­ed, and holes were being dug for some 500 portable toi­lets. More than 30 rock groups were booked, and tick­ets went on sale in sev­er­al cities around the coun­try.

Obliv­i­ous to their fate, the orga­niz­ers sold almost 9,000 tick­ets. “Just eight days after its announce­ment, a restrain­ing order was issued against the event,” fol­lowed by a string of sim­i­lar ordi­nances in neigh­bor­ing coun­ties as oth­er locales got wind of the pro­ject­ed 50,000 to 60,000 atten­dees expect­ed to show up. Soon, those num­bers swelled to the hun­dreds of thou­sands. Alexan­der and Dun­can went on TV and begged author­i­ties to let the show pro­ceed to pre­vent mass civ­il unrest.

Forced to move the fes­ti­val out of state, they set­tled on a place called Bull Island, “not in fact an island, but rather a col­lec­tion of swampy fields,” Cham­ber­lain notes, “under the legal juris­dic­tion of the town of Car­mi, Illi­nois, but only acces­si­ble through Indi­ana.” When 200,000 hip­pies arrived on Labor Day week­end, it caused a traf­fic jam 30 miles long, and they were forced to aban­don their cars and hike for miles on foot, resem­bling “a defeat­ed army,” NBC Night­ly News reporter Edwin New­man put it.

Some of the acts — includ­ing Ravi Shankar, Ted Nugen­t’s Amboy Dukes, and Black Oak Arkansas — did make it, chop­per­ing in to play a set, then swift­ly leav­ing. “Cheech and Chong were heli­coptered in, per­formed for fif­teen min­utes in a del­uge of rain, cut their set short,” and got out, sure­ly sens­ing bad vibes every­where, caused by strych­nine-laced acid. Big acts like Rod Stew­art and Black Sab­bath had already can­celed, leav­ing long stretch­es of silence between sets.

For most fes­ti­val atten­dees, the open-air drug mar­kets stood out most in their mem­o­ries. “The dope dis­trict looked like dou­ble rows of fish stands at the coun­ty fair!” one remem­bers. “It was eas­i­er to buy drugs than it was to buy water,” recalled anoth­er attendee. The police, vast­ly out­num­bered, left well enough alone and stayed out­side the fence. Jemayel Khawa­ja at Ozy paints the scene:

Inside, chaos was already in full swing. The stage was half con­struct­ed, and the camp­grounds — crammed with over four times as many peo­ple as expect­ed — were lined with open drug mar­kets. Hawk­ers set up stalls sell­ing mar­i­jua­na, mesca­line, LSD and hero­in. “I nev­er saw so many drugs in my life,” attendee Ray Kessler recalled to local news­pa­per The Mount Ver­non Demo­c­rat. With only six out­hous­es and half-dug wells to serve as san­i­ta­tion, thou­sands instead took to reliev­ing them­selves en masse in what became known as “The Turd Fields” and bathing in the Wabash Riv­er.

What hap­pened was sure­ly inevitable. Price goug­ing caused atten­dees, rabid with hunger and thirst, to attack ven­dors. Some caught pneu­mo­nia in the tor­ren­tial rains on the third day. One attendee drowned in the Wabash, anoth­er was run over by a truck but sur­vived, many were beat­en and robbed, one over­dosed, one gave birth. By that evening, “the crowd had endured enough,” Cham­ber­lain writes. “The last­ing image many have of the fes­ti­val is the crowd set­ting the stage on fire. It was a fit­ting end­ing. By this point, the pop­u­lous turned to mass exo­dus, dur­ing which com­mon themes were intox­i­ca­tion, break­downs, theft, long dri­ves, and come­downs.”

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Lis­ten Online to Every Minute of the Orig­i­nal Wood­stock Fes­ti­val

Leg­endary Protest Songs from Wood­stock: Hen­drix, Jef­fer­son Air­plane, Coun­try Joe & More Per­form Protest Songs Dur­ing the Music Fes­ti­val That Launched 50 Years Ago This Week

Revis­it the Infa­mous Rolling Stones Free Fes­ti­val at Alta­mont: The Ill-Fat­ed Con­cert Took Place 50 Years Ago

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Brian Eno Launches His Own Radio Station with Hundreds of Unreleased Tracks: Hear Two Programs

in Music | June 17th, 2021

Cre­ative Com­mons image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Back in 2013, Bri­an Eno gave a talk at the Red Bull Acad­e­my, the lec­ture series that has host­ed fel­low musi­cians like Tony Vis­con­ti, Deb­bie Har­ry, and Nile Rogers. Asked when he knew a piece of music was fin­ished, Eno let drop that he cur­rent­ly had 200,809 works of unre­leased music. (The actu­al answer though? “When there’s a dead­line”).

Usu­al­ly we have to wait for posthu­mous releas­es to hear such music, like what is cur­rent­ly hap­pen­ing now to Prince’s “vault” of music. Eno is not wait­ing. He got the dead­line.

Sonos Radio HD, the music divi­sion of the speak­er and audio sys­tem com­pa­ny, announced last week that Eno has curat­ed a radio sta­tion that will play noth­ing but unre­leased cuts from his five decades of mak­ing music. There’s so much mate­r­i­al, the chance of a lis­ten­er hear­ing a repeat is slim. (Still, the sta­tion promis­es hun­dreds of tracks, not hun­dreds of thou­sands.)

Now, this is not an adver­tise­ment for Sonos, but a heads up that in order to pro­mote “The Light­house,” as Eno has called the radio sta­tion, Sonos has dropped two Eno-led radio shows where he shares just a frac­tion of the unre­leased mate­r­i­al, with a promise of two more episodes to come. One fea­tures an inter­view­er, and the oth­er is just Eno talk­ing about the tracks. (And you *can* get one month free at Sonos if you sign up.)


“(A radio sta­tion) is some­thing I’ve been think­ing about for years and years and years,” says Eno. “And it’s part­ly because I have far too much music in my life. I have so much stuff.”


The tracks have been purged of titles and have been instead giv­en the util­i­tar­i­an monikers of “Light­house Num­ber (X)”. Any­way, titles sug­gest too much thought. “Some are pret­ty crap titles,” he says. “The prob­lem with work­ing on com­put­ers is that you have to give things titles before you’ve actu­al­ly made them…Sometimes the pieces often quick­ly out­grow the titles.”

If you’re expect­ing noth­ing but ambi­ent wash­es and gen­er­a­tive music, you might be sur­prised at the vari­ety. In the first Eno-host­ed show, he plays a funky jam (“Light­house Num­ber 002”) co-com­posed by Peter Chil­vers and stuffed with r’n’b sam­ples; and an almost-com­plet­ed song fea­tur­ing the Eury­th­mics’ Dave Stew­art on gui­tar, called “All the Bloody Fight­ers,” aka “Light­house Num­ber 106”.

Why call it “The Light­house”? “I like the idea of a sort of bea­con call­ing you, telling you some­thing, warn­ing you per­haps, announc­ing some­thing.” He also cred­its a friend who told him his unre­leased music is like ships lost at sea. The light­house “is call­ing in some of those lost ships.”

As a bonus, lis­ten below to Eno’s recent inter­view with Rick Rubin, where they talk about the Sonos project and much more.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Expe­ri­ence a Video Paint­ing of Bri­an Eno’s Thurs­day After­noon That Has Soothed & Relaxed Mil­lions of Peo­ple

Hear Bri­an Eno’s Rarely-Heard Cov­er of the John­ny Cash Clas­sic, “Ring of Fire”

Dis­cov­er the Appre­hen­sion Engine: Bri­an Eno Called It “the Most Ter­ri­fy­ing Musi­cal Instru­ment of All Time”

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

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Watch Franz Liszt’s “Un Sospiro” Played with the Mesmerizing “Three-Hand Technique”

in Music | June 16th, 2021

“Piano edu­ca­tion is impor­tant for teach­ing polypho­ny, improv­ing sight-read­ing, con­sol­i­dat­ing the knowl­edge of har­mo­ny and gain­ing much more musi­cal abil­i­ties,” write Turk­ish researchers in the behav­ioral sci­ences jour­nal Pro­ce­dia. The stu­dent of the piano can advance solo or with anoth­er play­er in duets, play­ing what are called “four-hand pieces.” But learn­ing “to gain the atti­tudes of duet play­ing” pos­es a chal­lenge. Researchers Izzet Yuce­tok­er and Kok­sal Apay­din­li sug­gest a pos­si­ble inter­ven­tion — over­com­ing the dif­fi­cul­ties of play­ing four-hand pieces by learn­ing to play what are called “three-hand pieces.”

How, you might won­der, does one play the piano with three hands? It does not take an extra limb or a part­ner with one hand tied behind their back. Three-hand tech­nique is a dex­trous sleight-of-hand devel­oped in the 1830s, most promi­nent­ly by pianist Sigis­mond Thal­berg, a rival of Franz Liszt who could “appar­ent­ly not only counter Liszt’s leg­endary fire and thun­der with sub­tle­ty,” Bryce Mor­ri­son writes at Gramo­phone, “but who played as if with three hands. Three hands were heard, two were vis­i­ble!” Might this some­how be eas­i­er than play­ing duets?

One con­tem­po­rary review­er of Thalberg’s play­ing described it as “myr­i­ads of notes sound­ing from one extrem­i­ty of the instru­ment to the oth­er with­out dis­turb­ing the sub­ject, in which the three dis­tinct fea­tures of this com­bi­na­tion are clear­ly brought out by his exquis­ite touch.” The Pol­ish pianist and stu­dent of Liszt Moriz Rosen­thal claimed Thal­berg adopt­ed the tech­nique from the harp. “Such leg­erde­main quick­ly had nov­el­ty-con­scious Paris by the ears,” Mor­ri­son writes, “and an ele­gant white kid-glove rather than than a mere gaunt­let was thrown down before Liszt.”

Liszt would have none of it, derid­ing three-hand tech­nique as a trick unfit for his vir­tu­os­i­ty. Nonethe­less, “in 1837, Liszt, arguably the most charis­mat­ic vir­tu­oso of all time, was chal­lenged for suprema­cy by Sigis­mond Thal­berg…. Stung and infu­ri­at­ed by what he saw as Thalberg’s aris­to­crat­ic pre­ten­sions… Liszt replied with cor­r­us­cat­ing scorn.” He agreed to meet Thal­berg, not in a duet but a duel, at “the home of Count­ess Cristi­na Bel­gio­joso — lover of Lafayette, Heine and Liszt,” notes Georg Prodota at Inter­lude.

The Count­ess “gave a char­i­ty event for the refugees of the Ital­ian war of inde­pen­dence, and the con­tem­po­rary press com­pared the con­cert to the bat­tle between Rome and Carthage.” Count­ess Bel­gio­joso her­self (as did the press) pro­nounced the out­come a draw:

Nev­er was Liszt more con­trolled, more thought­ful, more ener­getic, more pas­sion­ate; nev­er has Thal­berg played with greater verve and ten­der­ness. Each of them pru­dent­ly stayed with­in his har­mon­ic domain, but each used every one of his resources. It was an admirable joust. The most pro­found silence fell over that noble are­na. And final­ly Liszt and Thal­berg were both pro­claimed vic­tors by this glit­ter­ing and intel­li­gent assem­bly. Thus two vic­tors and no van­quished …

His­to­ry was not so kind. Liszt is now cel­e­brat­ed as “the most charis­mat­ic vir­tu­oso of all time,” while Thal­berg is hard­ly remem­bered. And some of the most cel­e­brat­ed exam­ples of pieces played with three-hand tech­nique come not from Thal­berg but from Liszt, such as “Un Sospiro” (“A Sigh”), the last of his Three Con­cert Études, com­posed between 1845 and 1849, not only as per­for­mance pieces, but — as it so hap­pens — for the gen­er­al improve­ment of a pianist’s tech­nique. Hear pianist Paul Bar­ton play three ver­sions of “Un Sospiro” above and down­load the sheet music for the piece here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Piano Played with 16 Increas­ing Lev­els of Com­plex­i­ty: From Easy to Very Com­plex

12-Year-Old Piano Prodi­gy Takes Four Notes Ran­dom­ly Picked from a Hat and Instant­ly Uses Them to Impro­vise a Sonata

Acclaimed Japan­ese Jazz Pianist Yōsuke Yamashita Plays a Burn­ing Piano on the Beach

How the Clavi­chord & Harp­si­chord Became the Mod­ern Piano: The Evo­lu­tion of Key­board Instru­ments, Explained

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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A History of Punk from 1976–78: A Free Online Course from the University of Reading

in Music, Online Courses | June 15th, 2021

From Matthew Wor­ley, pro­fes­sor of mod­ern his­to­ry at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Read­ing, comes the free online course Anar­chy in the UK: A His­to­ry of Punk from 1976–78. (Wor­ley is also the author of the book, No Future: Punk, Pol­i­tics and British Youth Cul­ture.) The course cov­ers the fol­low­ing ground:

In the late 1970s, a new youth sub­cul­ture emerged in the UK. This, of course, was punk, and a cul­tur­al revolt was under­way.

In this course, you will learn about the emer­gence of punk and its diverse range of mean­ings. You’ll use that lens to explore how youth cul­tures pro­vid­ed space for peo­ple to reimag­ine, dis­cov­er and chal­lenge the soci­ety and com­mu­ni­ties in which they were com­ing of age.

You’ll explore punk as a tool of expres­sion for young peo­ple, and how it relat­ed to pol­i­tics and events. You’ll con­sid­er punk’s rela­tion­ship with gen­der, class, race, sex­u­al­i­ty and protest, draw­ing com­par­isons with the youth cul­ture of today…

This his­to­ry course also has an empha­sis on the cre­ative side of punk. You’ll explore DIY punk design and writ­ing, epit­o­mised by fanzines. You’ll learn how to cre­ate a real-life fanzine of your own, all the way to pub­lish­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion. This will help strength­en your com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills and encour­age inde­pen­dent thought and cre­ativ­i­ty.

Among oth­er things, the course will cov­er:

  • The diverse mean­ings of ‘punk’, its roots and its effects on British cul­ture.
  • The orig­i­na­tors and defin­ing events that led to punk’s spread across the UK and beyond.
  • The music: how the Sex Pis­tols opened the way for a wide range of sounds and bands.
  • Why fanzines became the per­fect medi­um for punk.
  • Punk’s influ­ence on pub­lish­ing, fash­ion, art and design.
  • Punk’s impact on issues of gen­der, class, race, sex­u­al­i­ty and protest.
  • Punk’s lega­cy and con­tin­u­ing influ­ence on soci­ety.

Anar­chy in the UK: A His­to­ry of Punk from 1976–78 can be tak­en for free on the Future­Learn plat­form. The course will be added to our list: 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the Clash Embraced New York’s Hip Hop Scene and Released the Dance Track, “The Mag­nif­i­cent Dance” (1981)

The Sex Pis­tols Riotous 1978 Tour Through the U.S. South: Watch/Hear Con­certs in Dal­las, Mem­phis, Tul­sa & More

The Sex Pis­tols Make a Scan­dalous Appear­ance on the Bill Grundy Show & Intro­duce Punk Rock to the Star­tled Mass­es (1976)

The Sex Pis­tols’ 1976 Man­ches­ter “Gig That Changed the World,” and the Day the Punk Era Began

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The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain Performs The Clash’s “Should I Stay Or Should I Go”

in Music | June 15th, 2021

Over the years, we’ve fea­tured The Ukulele Orches­tra of Great Britain per­form­ing cov­ers of var­i­ous rock classics–from the Rolling Stones’ “Sat­is­fac­tion” and Bowie’s “Heroes,” to Nir­vana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” and Talk­ing Heads’ “Psy­cho Killer.” Record­ed in Lon­don back in 2005, this clip fea­tures the Orches­tra per­form­ing The Clash’s ‘Should I Stay Or Should I Go.’  The per­for­mance is an out­take from the DVD, Anar­chy in the Ukulele, which is avail­able in dig­i­tal for­mat. Enjoy.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Seri­ous­ly Awe­some Ukulele Cov­ers of “Sul­tans of Swing,” “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” “Thun­der­struck,” and “Smells Like Teen Spir­it”

Jimi Hendrix’s “Voodoo Child” Shred­ded on the Ukulele

George Har­ri­son Explains Why Every­one Should Play the Ukulele

 

 

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Hear The Velvet Underground’s “Legendary Guitar Amp Tapes,” Which Showcases the Brilliance & Innovation of Lou Reed’s Guitar Playing (1969)

in Music | June 15th, 2021

What was the Vel­vet Under­ground? A Kim Fow­ly-like art project that out­lived its impre­sar­i­o’s inter­est? A main vehi­cle for Lou Reed, rock’s ego­ma­ni­ac under­dog (who was no one’s ingénue)? Was it three bands? 1. The Vel­vet Under­ground and Nico; 2. The Vel­vet Under­ground with John Cale; and 3. The Vel­vet Under­ground with Doug Yule after Cale’s depar­ture. (Let’s pass by, for the moment, whether VU with­out Reed war­rants a men­tion…)

Each iter­a­tion pio­neered essen­tial under­ground sounds — dirgy Euro-folk rock, strung-out New York garage rock, junkie bal­lads, psy­che­del­ic drone, exper­i­men­tal noise — near­ly all of them chan­neled through Reed’s under­rat­ed gui­tar play­ing, which was, per­haps the most impor­tant mem­ber of the band all along. Who­ev­er taped the Vel­vets (in their sec­ond incar­na­tion) on March 15, 1969, on the last night of a three-show engage­ment at The Boston Tea Par­ty in Boston, MA, seemed to think so. “The entire set was record­ed by a fan direct­ly from Lou Reed’s gui­tar ampli­fi­er,” MetaFil­ter points out.

The mic jammed in the back of Reed’s amp, a Head Her­itage review­er writes, pro­duced “a mighty elec­tron­ic roar that reveals the depth and lay­ers of Reed’s play­ing. Over and under­tones, feed­back, string buzz, the scratch of fin­gers on frets and the crack­le and hum of tube amps com­bine to cre­ate a mono­lith­ic blast of met­al machine music.” Known as the “leg­endary gui­tar amp tape” and long sought by col­lec­tors and fans, the boot­leg, which you can hear above, “serves as a tes­ta­ment to the bril­liance and inno­va­tion of Reed’s gui­tar-play­ing — both qual­i­ties that are often under­rat­ed, if not over­looked entire­ly, by crit­ics of his work,” as Richie Unter­berg­er writes.

It should be evi­dent thus far that these record­ings are hard­ly a com­pre­hen­sive doc­u­ment of the Vel­vet Under­ground in ear­ly 1969. Except for Mo Tuck­er’s glo­ri­ous, but muf­fled thump­ing and some of Ster­ling Mor­rison’s excel­lent gui­tar inter­play, the rest of the band is hard­ly audi­ble. Songs like “Can­dy Says” and “Jesus” — on which Reed does not cre­ate sub­lime swirls of noise and feed­back — chug along monot­o­nous­ly with­out their melodies. “It is frus­trat­ing,” Unter­berg­er admits, “to hear such a one-dimen­sion­al audio-snap­shot of what is clear­ly a good — if not great — night for the band” (who were far more than one of their parts). On the oth­er hand, nowhere else can we hear the nuance, feroc­i­ty, and out­right insan­i­ty of Reed’s play­ing so amply demon­strat­ed on the major­i­ty of this doc­u­ment.

The tape cir­cu­lat­ed for years as a Japan­ese boot­leg, an inter­est­ing fact, notes a Rate Your Music com­menter, “con­sid­er­ing this bears more sim­i­lar­i­ty to record­ings from the likes of [leg­endary Japan­ese psych rock band] Les Ral­lizes Dénudés than most of the Vel­vet Under­ground’s oth­er mate­r­i­al.” The record­ings may have well paved the way for the explo­sion of Japan­ese psy­che­del­ic rock to come. They also demon­strate the influ­ence of Ornette Cole­man in Reed’s play­ing, and the lib­er­at­ing phi­los­o­phy Cole­man would come to call Har­molod­ics.

“Alla that boo-ha about whether Reed real­ly was influ­enced by free jazz,” writes one review­er quot­ed on MetaFil­ter, “can be put to rest here as he pulls the kind of wail­ing hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry shapes from the gui­tar that it would take the god­dam Blue Humans to decode a cou­ple of decades lat­er.” It may well over­state the case to claim that “Lou Reed sin­gle-hand­ed­ly invent­ed under­ground music,” but we can hear in these record­ings the seeds of every­thing from Tele­vi­sion to Son­ic Youth to Pave­ment to Roy­al Trux and so much more. See the full track­list below, a “clas­sic setlist,” notes MetaFil­ter, “from around the time of their 3rd LP.”

I Can’t Stand It
Can­dy Says
I’m Wait­ing For The Man
Fer­ry­boat Bill
I’m Set Free
What Goes On
White Light White Heat
Begin­ning To See The Light
Jesus
Hero­in / Sis­ter Ray
Move Right In
Run Run Run
Fog­gy Notion

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Andy Warhol Explains Why He Decid­ed to Give Up Paint­ing & Man­age the Vel­vet Under­ground Instead (1966)

Hear Ornette Cole­man Col­lab­o­rate with Lou Reed, Which Lou Called “One of My Great­est Moments”

The Vel­vet Under­ground Cap­tured in Col­or Con­cert Footage by Andy Warhol (1967)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Hear the Amati “King” Cello, the Oldest Known Cello in Existence (c. 1560)

in History, Music | June 11th, 2021

The Stradi­vari fam­i­ly has received all of the pop­u­lar acclaim for per­fect­ing the vio­lin. But we should know the name Amati — in whose Cre­mona work­shop Anto­nio Stradi­vari appren­ticed in the 17th cen­tu­ry. The vio­lin-mak­ing fam­i­ly was immense­ly impor­tant to the refine­ment of clas­si­cal instru­ments. “Born around 1505,” writes Jor­dan Smith at CMuse, founder Andrea Amati “is con­sid­ered the father of mod­ern vio­lin­mak­ing. He made major steps for­ward in improv­ing the design of vio­lins, includ­ing through the devel­op­ment of sound-holes” into their now-famil­iar f‑shape.

Among Amati’s cre­ations is the so-called “King” cel­lo, made in the mid-1500s, part of a set of 38 stringed instru­ments dec­o­rat­ed and “paint­ed in the style of Limo­ges porce­lain” for the court of King Charles IX of France.

The instru­ment is now the old­est known cel­lo and “one of the few Amati instru­ments still in exis­tence.” And yet, call­ing the “King” a cel­lo is a bit of a his­tor­i­cal stretch. “The ter­mi­nol­o­gy refer­ring to the ear­ly forms of cel­lo is con­vo­lut­ed and incon­sis­tent,” Matthew Zeller notes at the Strad. “Andrea Amati would like­ly have referred to the ‘King’ as the bas­so (bass vio­lin).”

Images cour­tesy of Nation­al Music Muse­um

The instru­ment remained in the French court until the French Rev­o­lu­tion, after which the bas­so fell out of favor and the “King” was “dras­ti­cal­ly reduced in size” through an alter­ation process that “stood at the fore­front of musi­cal instru­ment devel­op­ment dur­ing the last quar­ter of the 18th cen­tu­ry and through­out the 19th,” a way trans­form obso­lete forms into those more suit­able for con­tem­po­rary music. “By 1801,” Zeller writes, “the date that the ‘King’ might have been reduced, large-for­mat bas­sos were obso­lete, dis­card­ed in favour of the small­er-bod­ied cel­los.”

Zeller has stud­ied the exten­sive alter­ation of the “King” cel­lo (includ­ing a new neck and enlarge­ment from three strings to four) with CT scans of its joints and exam­i­na­tions of now-dis­tort­ed dec­o­ra­tions. The reduc­tion means we can­not hear its orig­i­nal glo­ry — and it was, by all accounts, a glo­ri­ous instru­ment, “a mem­ber of a larg­er fam­i­ly of instru­ments of fixed mea­sure­ments relat­ed togeth­er by pro­found math­e­mat­i­cal, geo­met­ri­cal, and acousti­cal rela­tion­ships of size and tone,” writes Yale con­ser­va­tor Andrew Dip­per, “which gave the set the abil­i­ty to per­form, in uni­son, some of the world’s first orches­tral music for bowed strings.”

We can, how­ev­er, hear the “King” cel­lo (briefly, at the top) in its cur­rent (cir­ca 1801), form, and it still sounds stun­ning. Cel­list Joshua Koesten­baum vis­it­ed the cel­lo at its home in the Nation­al Music Muse­um in Ver­mil­lion, South Dako­ta in 2005 to play it. “It didn’t take much effort to find the instrument’s nat­u­ral­ly sweet, warm sound,” he says. “It was incred­i­bly easy to play — com­fort­able, plea­sur­able, for­giv­ing, and user-friend­ly…. I felt at home.” Learn more about the lat­est research on the “King” cel­lo at Google Arts & Cul­ture and the Strad.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Why Vio­lins Have F‑Holes: The Sci­ence & His­to­ry of a Remark­able Renais­sance Design

Watch Price­less 17-Cen­tu­ry Stradi­var­ius and Amati Vio­lins Get Tak­en for a Test Dri­ve by Pro­fes­sion­al Vio­lin­ists

Watch the Mak­ing of a Hand-Craft­ed Vio­lin, from Start to Fin­ish, in a Beau­ti­ful­ly-Shot Doc­u­men­tary

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Scientists Create an Interactive Map of the 13 Emotions Evoked by Music: Joy, Sadness, Desire, Annoyance, and More

in Music, Neuroscience, Science | June 10th, 2021

Most of our playlists today are filled with music about emo­tions: usu­al­ly love, of course, but also excite­ment, defi­ance, anger, dev­as­ta­tion, and a host of oth­ers besides. We lis­ten to these songs in order to appre­ci­ate the musi­cian­ship that went into them, but also to indulge in their emo­tions for our­selves. As for what exact­ly evokes these feel­ings with­in us, lyrics only do part of the job, and per­haps a small part at that. In search of a more rig­or­ous con­cep­tion of which son­ic qual­i­ties trig­ger which emo­tions in lis­ten­ers — and a mea­sure­ment of how many kinds of emo­tions music can trig­ger — sci­en­tists at UC Berke­ley have con­duct­ed a cross-cul­tur­al research project and used the data to make an inter­ac­tive lis­ten­ing map.

The study’s cre­ators, a group includ­ing psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor Dacher Kelt­ner (found­ing direc­tor of the Greater Good Sci­ence Cen­ter) and neu­ro­science doc­tor­al stu­dent Alan Cowen, “sur­veyed more than 2,500 peo­ple in the Unit­ed States and Chi­na about their emo­tion­al respons­es to these and thou­sands of oth­er songs from gen­res includ­ing rock, folk, jazz, clas­si­cal, march­ing band, exper­i­men­tal and heavy met­al.” So writes Berkley News’ Yas­min Anwar, who sum­ma­rizes the broad­er find­ings as fol­lows: “The sub­jec­tive expe­ri­ence of music across cul­tures can be mapped with­in at least 13 over­ar­ch­ing feel­ings: Amuse­ment, joy, eroti­cism, beau­ty, relax­ation, sad­ness, dreami­ness, tri­umph, anx­i­ety, scari­ness, annoy­ance, defi­ance, and feel­ing pumped up.”

Many lis­ten­er respons­es can’t have been ter­ri­bly sur­pris­ing. “Vivaldi’s ‘Four Sea­sons’ made peo­ple feel ener­gized. The Clash’s ‘Rock the Cas­bah’ pumped them up. Al Green’s ‘Let’s Stay Togeth­er’ evoked sen­su­al­i­ty and Israel (Iz) Kamakawiwoʻole’s ‘Some­where over the Rain­bow’ elicit­ed joy.

Mean­while, heavy met­al was wide­ly viewed as defi­ant and, just as its com­pos­er intend­ed, the show­er scene score from the movie Psy­cho trig­gered fear.” The cul­tur­al influ­ence of Hitch­cock, one might object, has by now tran­scend­ed all bound­aries, but accord­ing to the study even Chi­nese clas­si­cal music gets the same basic emo­tions across to Chi­nese and non-Chi­nese lis­ten­ers alike.

Still, all respectable art, even or per­haps espe­cial­ly an abstract one such as music, leaves plen­ty of room for per­son­al inter­pre­ta­tion. You can check your own emo­tion­al respons­es against those of the Berke­ley sur­vey’s respon­dents with its inter­ac­tive lis­ten­ing map. Just roll your cur­sor over any of point on its emo­tion­al ter­ri­to­ries, and you’ll hear a short clip of the song lis­ten­ers placed there. On the penin­su­la of cat­e­go­ry H, “erot­ic, desirous,” you’ll hear Chris Isaak, Wham!, and a great many sax­o­phon­ists; down in the nether­lands of cat­e­go­ry G, “ener­giz­ing, pump-up,” Rick Ast­ley’s immor­tal­ized “Nev­er Gonna Give You Up” and Alien Ant Far­m’s nov­el­ty cov­er of “Smooth Crim­i­nal.” Anwar also notes that “The Shape of You,” Ed Sheeran’s inescapable hit, “sparks joy” — but if I have to hear it one more time at the gym, I can assure you my own emo­tion­al response won’t be quite so pos­i­tive.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Daniel Lev­itin Shows How Musi­cians Com­mu­ni­cate Emo­tion

Watch Clas­si­cal Music Get Per­fect­ly Visu­al­ized as an Emo­tion­al Roller Coast­er Ride

The Ther­a­peu­tic Ben­e­fits of Ambi­ent Music: Sci­ence Shows How It Eas­es Chron­ic Anx­i­ety, Phys­i­cal Pain, and ICU-Relat­ed Trau­ma

Neu­rosym­pho­ny: A High-Res­o­lu­tion Look into the Brain, Set to the Music of Brain Waves

An Inter­ac­tive Map of the 2,000+ Sounds Humans Use to Com­mu­ni­cate With­out Words: Grunts, Sobs, Sighs, Laughs & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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